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ABSTRACT

This article examines a cluster of London-based small and independent presses, from the 1960s onwards, whose participants identify the eighteenth-century poet-artist William Blake as an important model for their publishing activities. Drawing on data collected through interviews with these practitioners, here termed 'London Blakeans', the article demonstrates that these groups represent a distinctive formation within both the history of independent publishing and the creative reception of Blake's work. Part 1 introduces key contexts, setting up the prominence of Blake-as-model within discourses around DIY and countercultural print media, assessing the historical foundation for Blake's reputation of 'independence' within small-press publishing networks, and characterising the political valences of Blake's adoption by these predominantly left-leaning groups. Part 2 presents a chronological redescription of Blakean small and independent publishing within London from the 1960s to the present day, drawing substantially upon interviews with writers, artists, and publishers within these networks. In presenting this material within the framework of publishing history, the article documents a series of texts and practices that have otherwise eluded archives and serious scholarly attention.

KEYWORDS: William Blake, counterculture, DIY, independent publishing, London, psychogeography, zines.

INTRODUCTION

Although closely associated with some sense of the contemporary, smallpress publishing has often been a site for inventive toggling between the old and the new. In this article, I argue that the legacy of poet-artist William Blake (1757-1827) within recent small-press and independent publishing networks in London is more extensive than either Blake scholars or historians of publishing acknowledge. London-based Blakean publishers represent a distinctive formation within Blake's reception and within the wider history of independent publishing.

Part 1 introduces key cultural, economic, and political valences of Blake's legacy in London-based independent publishing. I examine counterculture, DIY, independence, place, and the politicisation of independent publishing, distinguishing between Blake's working practices and the London Blakeans' interpretations of his working practices, which they adopt, to varying degrees, as their model. These 'Blakean' small and independent publishing houses bespeak and foster a reputation of experimental artisanship that strives to be 'independent' from and/or in opposition to dominant means of production as enshrined today in the so-called 'Big Five' publishing conglomerates.1 Part 1 demonstrates that this characterisation of Blake derives substantially from Blake's rhetorical idealisation of independence, especially in his late career, not...

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